SOURCE: "The English Horace in Defense of Literature: Matthew Prior's Early Satires," in Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 19-37.

[In the following essay, Nelson traces the development of Prior's satires, which began as expressions of personal invective and evolved into more considered satiric commentary on human types rather than specific individuals and often included elements of self-deprecation.]

By the early eighteenth century, Matthew Prior had already acquired the title of the "English Horace" because of his evident attraction to the great Latin poet of antiquity and occasional imitation of his work (Goad 90).¹ Since that time, this identification has generally been accepted without qualification, so that Prior's poetry is still commonly described in Horatian terms, as being easy, elegant, and urbane. George Sherburn perhaps best summarizes this approach to Prior the poet in The Literary History of England, where he claims that Prior "became perhaps the ideal neoclassicist, writing with both lightness and a noble urbanity, with elegant ease and a deft and imaginative use of classical patterns, yet he captured the mood and felicity of both Horace and Anacreon" (909). While this is not an inaccurate description of some of Prior's verse, we do a disservice to Prior if we fail to recognize another side to him and his poetry, a side that can scarcely be subsumed under the rubric of "elegant ease." His early satires, on the contrary, reveal a poet with a much stronger, more caustic voice than is usually acknowledged. This mode of invective, however, is soon complicated by other tones and voices. Prior's growth as a satirist shows him developing a sophistication and complexity that lead to the fine poems of his middle and later years.

Prior began his career in the early 1680s in quite a different tradition from that of Horace. Rochester, Oldham, the Earl of Dorset (Prior's patron), Dryden, and others were circulating or publishing satires characterized by a freedom and vehemence that have rarely been equalled (Lord 107-08). Instead of the restrained and elegant mode, we find a bold, slashing, and occasionally passionate voice, at least in Prior's satires, which has more to do with Juvenal than Horace.² Lampoon and invective were commonplace among the greatest writers of the time, so it is natural that a young man who wanted to make a name for himself should write in the same vein. The decade of the 1680s was, of course, a tumultuous one, with the country verging on civil war at its outset and undergoing a revolution at its end. Politics and religion were divisive subjects, and the poetry of the time reflects this explosive atmosphere. Although Prior is not particularly political, his poetry is colored by his connection with the Earl of Dorset and his later allegiance to William III. Any account of Prior's poetic career must deal with his beginning in the punitive satiric modepopular at the time, a mode that was inevitably tied to the social conflict that split the country. Even as a young poet, we will see, he was not afraid to name names and to make cutting personal attacks.³

His first satires were written in 1685 while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge. One of these, "A Satyr on the Modern Translators," was sent in a letter to Dr. Humphrey Gower, who was then Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, where Prior was a student. Prior's purpose, he declares in his letter, is to

let our translators know that Rome and Athens are our territories; that our Laureate might in good manners have left the version of Latin authors to those who had the happiness to understand them; that we accuse not others, but defend ourselves, and would only shew that these corruptions of our tongue proceed from him [Dryden] and his tribe, which he unjustly casts upon the clergy.

(Prior 2: 823)⁴

The occasion that prompted Prior's poem was the publication of three volumes of classical translations and English poetry gathered by Dryden and Jacob Tonson from 1680-85.⁵ Prior believed that the Poet Laureate and other translators were stepping outside their literary expertise to the detriment of English letters. He lashes out at the distortions and errors of these translations, rejecting Dryden's theory of paraphrase and refusing to be intimidated by the reputation and social standing of the translators. For his epigraph Prior takes a line from Horace's Epistles, "Odi imitatores servum pecus" 'O you mimics, you slavish herd,' (1.19.19) with the Odi apparently added by Prior to clarify the anger behind the line. Responding to criticism of his poetry that it was warmed-over Greek imitation, Horace fired the charge back at his critics. Occasionally, Horace himself was not very "Horatian." Prior picked up this lead, however, and amplified it in his own satire.

Prior opens his attack with a satiric account of the reasons for the appearance of these miscellanies. The unification of the theaters, he declares, has thrown some writers out of work, so they desperately need a new source of income:

Those who with nine months toil had spoil'd a Play,
In hopes of Eating at a full Third day,
Justly despairing longer to sustain
A craving Stomach from an empty Brain,
Have left Stage-practice, chang'd their old Vocations,
Atoning for bad Plays, with worse translations.…
(1:19; 7-12)

Dryden particularly is singled out for some scathing remarks on his versions of the Latin poems:

When Virgil's height is lost, when Ovid soars,
And in Heroics Canace deplores
Her Follies, louder than her Father roars,
I'd let him take Almanzor for his Theme;
In lofty Verse make Maximin blaspheme,
Or sing in softer Airs St. Katherine's Dream …
But when not satisfy'd with Spoils at home,
The Pyrate wou'd to foreign Borders roam;
May he still split on some unlucky Coast,
And have his Works, or Dictionary lost;
That he may know what Roman Authors mean,
No more than does our blind Translatress Behn.
(59-64; 73-78)

Prior's chief concern here, as in some later satires, is with the despoiling of the classics, the violation of their sense and style merely to serve the mercenary purposes of the modern poets. His metaphor of the pirate is especially apt and effective. In the last line of the passage above, Prior uses Dryden's own statement in the Preface to Ovid's Epistles that Aphra Behn "understood not Latine …" (Prior 2: 824, n.78) to underscore the ignorance of these interlopers.

Dryden's collaborators in these translations come in for some equally harsh treatment. The Earl of Mulgrave, Thomas Rymer, Thomas Creech, John Ogilby, and Behn all are assailed for their gross errors, inaccuracies, and absurdities in rendering the Latin authors. Despite his title and eminence, Mulgrave is depicted as a totally inept translator, dependent on the already ridiculed Dryden for his language and ideas:

My Lord I thought so generous would prove,
To scorn a Rival in affairs of Love:
But well he knew his teeming pangs were vain,
Till Midwife Dryden eas'd his labouring Brain;
And that when part of Hudibras 's Horse
Jogg'd on, the other would not hang an Arse;
So when fleet Jowler hears the joyfull halloo,
He drags his sluggish Mate, and Tray must follow.
But how could this learn'd brace employ their time?
One construed sure, while th'other pump'd for Rhime.…
(31-40)

Prior's combination of literary and animal imagery effectively reduces these prominent writers to foolish adventurers who have strayed outside their proper field of expertise. No wonder that Prior later disavowed all connection with this poem, as well as his "Satyr upon Poets," when he had become a friend of Mulgraveand somewhat reconciled to Dryden (Prior 2: 823). As for "painfull" Creech, whose 1682 version of Lucretius had been widely admired, Prior suggests that he would have done better not to have continued his translating efforts:

Had he stopt here—But ruin'd by Success,
With a new Spawn he fill'd the burthen'd Press,
Till, as his Volumes swell'd, his Fame grew less.
So Merchants flattered with increasing Gain,
Still tempt the falshood of the doubtfull Main;
So the first running of the lucky Dice,
Does eager Bully to new Bets intice;
Till fortune urges him to be undone,
And Ames-Ace loses what kind Sixes wone.
(125-33)

Likening Creech to both a greedy merchant and a gambling fool, Prior maintains the theme of mercenary motives driving these writers to fields of endeavor beyond their abilities. Prior's heroic couplet, although not a match for Butler's octosyllable for learned farce and rhyming ridicule, is nevertheless an effective vehicle for embodying his satiric purpose. For a young man, Prior's command over his verse form and his imagery is quite remarkable. But, most of all, his gift for a bold, slashing, and serious satire is already apparent.⁶

In another poem of the same year, this one sent to Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, Prior adopts the "advice-to-the-painter" form common in the time to use for political satire. Here he comments on the short-lived 1685 rebellion against James II led by the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyle.⁷ Using this "advice" format, Marvell and others had vigorously attacked the regime of Charles II, but Prior employs the form here not only to defend the monarchy from the aggressions of a pretender but also to defend the integrity of art. His weapon is satire, of course, less strident and more sophisticated than most previous "painter" poems, but still displaying an interesting sympathy for the rebel. He describes in detail the new portrait of the Duke and his activities that should be painted to replace the old one that was given to the university when Monmouth became chancellor of Cambridge in 1674. The first portrait had been ordered burned by university authorities after Monmouth led the invasion to depose James II. Prior reserves his harshest attacks for Monmouth's allies and associates, such as Robert Ferguson, a dissenting minister who served as chaplain to the rebel army and whom Prior char-acterizes as "The Wretch that hates (like his Arguile) the Crown, / The Wretch that (like our Oates) defames the Gown …" (1:9; 43-44). Ferguson, Prior suggests, is a sinister figure whose malignant hatred of the principal English institutions is comparable to that of one of the most infamous men of his time, Titus Oates.

Another of Monmouth's associates whom Prior attacks is Forde Grey, Baron Grey of Werk, who was commander of the rebel cavalry at Sedgemoor, where they suffered their final defeat. Grey's cowardice at the battle comes in for some scathing remarks:

Then near the Pageant Prince, (alass! too nigh,)
Draw Gray with a Romantic constancy,
"Resolv'd to conquer or resolv'd to—fly."
And let there in his guilty Face appear
The Rebel's malice and the Cowards fear,
That future ages in thy Piece may see,
Not his Wife falser to his bed, then to his party He.
(49-55)

Not only did he betray his friends at the battle, he later betrayed them to the government at the trial of the rebels. Prior treats him with deserved contempt and sarcasm. In addition, Prior berates the city of Taunton for welcoming Monmouth to England and aiding him in the early stages of the rebellion, he lashes out against Holland's support for the rebels, and he ridicules the Duke's army itself, which was urged into battle by Ferguson's zealous rhetoric:

Excited thus by their Camp-preist's long prayer,
Their Countries curses, and their own despair,
Whilst Hell combines with it's black offspring night,
To hide their Treach'ry, or Secure their flight,
The watchfull Troops with cruell hast come on,
Then shout, look terrible, discharge, and run.
(65-70)

Such a portrait as Prior recommends will obviously use much stronger colors than the original, but mainly black.

Prior's attack on the Duke, on the other hand, is muted, like Dryden's in Absalom and Achitophel. Monmouth is, he suggests, a "misled, aspiring, wretched Man" (13), whose "Pride and Sorrow" (92) struggle for supremacy in his divided heart. The Duke is thus "the great, pittied, stubborn Traytour" (90), whose family grieves at his refusal to accept clerical offers of grace if he would only recant. The poem closes with an admonition to the painter not to employ the full resources of his art to evoke compassion for Monmouth, since he might very well succeed:

Now close the dismal Scene, conceal the rest—
—That the sad Orphan's Eyes can teach us best,
Thy guilty Art might raise our ill-plac'd grief too high
And make us whilst We pitty Him, forgett our Loyalty.
(111-14)

Such a mixed portrait of this pretender to the throne probably reflects the continuing popularity of the Duke even after his execution for treason. Prior shows that he can easily and skillfully modulate from the harshly satiric to the pathetic in his verse when he wishes. Here partisanship and invective are momentarily transcended by a broader sympathy, a trait that few political poems of the time displayed. His brief foray into political poetry thus reveals the approach that guided much of the rest of his career: strong support for the established power structure, a powerful attack on opponents of the government, and yet a recognition of the valuable qualities that may exist in certain in-dividual antagonists. Rather than being radical or subversive, Prior's personal and public satire expresses clearly and directly the feelings that many of his countrymen must have shared. His central premise is that art, like literature, must tell the exact truth about its subject and not succumb to partisan passion.

In Prior's next satire, the "Satyr upon the Poets" (probably written in the spring of 1687), he imitates, very loosely, the first ninety-seven lines of Juvenal's seventh satire, which he expands into 218.⁸ It seems likely that Prior was attracted to this poem because of Juvenal's concern with the wretched state of the arts in Rome in his time. Like Juvenal, Prior deals with the failure of the patronage system and the subsequent hardship for serious writers. Unlike Juvenal, Prior focuses exclusively on the fate of creative writers in his time; the Latin poet ranges more broadly over professional writers as a class, from historians to rhetoricians.⁹ His imitation, if we can call it that, significantly alters the targets of the ridicule to include incompetent and mercenary poets as well as patrons. There is, then, little specific interplay between Prior's satire and Juvenal's, other than the theme of neglect and misery among writers.

The treatment of patrons by the two poets is also quite different. Although he begins with the possibility that the emperor may lend his support, Juvenal dwells at length on the impossibility of any intelligent private patronage. He suggests not only that the current nobility scorn writers, but that they will do anything to avoid having to give support to the poets, including writing poetry themselves. As a result, writers are forced either into a penurious independence, which makes great art impossible, or into a debased relationship that requires them to flatter their masters' absurd works. Prior, in contrast, opens his poem by addressing his patron, the Earl of Dorset, in very personal and complimentary terms:

All my Endeavours, all my Hopes depend
On you, the Orphans, and the Muses Friend:
The only great good Man, who will declare
Virtue, and Verse the Objects of your Care,
And prove a Patron in the worst of times.…
(1:28; 1-5)

More than conventional praise, these lines establish that the ideal can be a reality, when the right person is involved. Juvenal briefly mentions Maecenas, the Roman patron who took care of Horace and Virgil, but he makes clear that such wise benevolence has long since been abandoned. At the end of his poem Prior returns to address his Maecenas, thanking Dorset for his help and acknowledging his great personal debt to him: "for 0! to you / My Song, my Thought, my very Soul is due" (206-07). Juvenal, on the other hand, never returns to the possibility that Caesar may prove to be a munificent patron, concluding his poem with the portrait of a harassed, ill-respected schoolteacher, who will be lucky to make as much from a pupil in one year as a jockey will in a single race. Dorset thus serves to mitigate the Juvenalian satire on English society that Prior sets forth, though it is also clear that one lone man cannot make up for the general indifference.

In the body of the poem Prior follows Juvenal more closely when he inveighs against the failure of patronage in his time. His chief example is the Earl of Mulgrave, one of those eminent persons who should be a patron, but who has become a poet himself and expects praise from his dependents. He

Damns the dull Poems of the Scribling Town,
Applauds your Writing, and Esteems his own:
Whil'st thou in Complaisance oblig'd must sit
To extol his Judgment, and admire his Wit;
And wrapt with his Essay on Poetry,
Swear Horace writ not half so strong as he,
But that we're partial to Antiquity.
(91-97)

Such vanity and hypocrisy are destructive of any fruitful relationship and thus of any great writing, which requires material and psychological support, freely offered and sensitively given. Juvenal emphasized that great poetry is impossible in poverty: "When Horace cried 'Rejoice' / His stomach was comfortably full" (165). But the best way to ensure that you have a full stomach, he suggests, is to please the most powerful people behind the throne—certain actors, dancers, and other crowd-pleasers. In England the worst example of public neglect that Prior cites is Thomas Otway. At one time Otway had been much appreciated, but neglect caused his death from "slow starvation" just two years before Prior was writing (Prior 2:830). His lines on Otway are a powerful indictment:

There was a time When Otway Charm'd the Stage;
Otway the Hope, the Sorrow of our Age!
When the full Pitt with pleas'd attention hung,
Wrap'd with each Accent from Castalio's Tongue:
With what a Laughter was his Soldier read!
How Mourn'd they, when his Jaffier Struck and Bled!
Yet this best Poet, tho with so much ease,
He never drew his pen, but sure to please …
He had of's many Wants, much earlier dy'd,
Had not kind Banker Betterton supply'd.…
(155-62; 165-66)

Such a passage as this, without precedent in Juvenal, reveals Prior at his best in a generous tribute to a contemporary poet and playwright. No more dramatic example of the failure of the patronage system need be offered than this, yet Otway's fate creates a pathos that significantly complicates the tone of the satire.

Most of the poem is invective, as Prior ridicules some of his fellow poets, who, he suggests, are not really poets in any case and should not expect public support. Some of these are prominent:

Shadwell and starving Tate I scorn to Name;
Poets of all Religions are the same:
Recanting Settle, brings the tuneful Ware,
Which wiser Smithfield damn'd to Sturbridge Fair:
Protests his Tragedies and Lybels fail
To yield him Paper, penny Loaves and Ale;
And bids our Youth, by his Example fly
The love of Politicks, and Poetry.
(10-17)

These are partisan poets who have involved themselves in a variety of causes and made their art subservient to their politics, religion, or self-interest. They would do better to appeal directly to a popular audience with ballads, songs, shows, and salves to be sold on the street. Their end is sad to contemplate: old age and infirmities, poverty, loneliness, and a bitter death. No comparable passage appears in Juvenal's poem, yet this is surely central to Prior's concern: poets themselves must share the blame for their unhappy condition, since they have sold their literary labors to the highest bidder and compromised their integrity. Prior's "imitation" of Juvenal's seventh satire, in sum, becomes a substantially original poem that reflects his own continuing concerns and values. He may "confuse" us somewhat in his mixture of praise and blame for poets, public, and patrons (Kupersmith 138), but at the same time he reveals his skill at writing both vigorous personal satire and forceful invective against the state of the arts in England.

Up to this point Prior's satires had all remained in manuscript, though they had probably circulated among his friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 1687, however, the first published work that brought him public attention appeared, The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd, a satire written in collaboration with his friend Charles Montagu.'" This work was, of course, another attack on Dryden, who had published an allegorical defense of his conversion to Roman Catholicism shortly before. With their work Prior and Montagu established themselves as rising young wits with a taste for sharp ridicule. To launch their attack they adopted an already popular burlesque of Dryden, The Rehearsal, with the characters Bayes (Dryden), and Johnson and Smith (spokesmen for the authors). In addition, Prior and Montagu employ Horace's fable of the country mouse and the city mouse, recently imitated by Abraham Cowley, to parody the beast fable form that Dryden had used for his allegory. According to Earl Miner, this satire was the "best-known and least polemical" (Dryden 3: 327) of the various attacks on the Poet Laureate after the publication of The Hind and the Panther. According to tradition, Dryden wept to see how two young writers treated him after he had been "civil" to them (Winn 428).

In The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd Bayes greets his old friends in a hostile manner, shunning their invitation to share a pint with them because of his new faith. Indeed, Bayes prepares to draw his sword if Johnson and Smith appear antagonistic toward his new religion. They are, naturally, confounded by his aggressiveness, but calm his fears and urge him to join them for the sake of old times. So he does, and after describing his new outlook, Bayes brings out a story he has recently written to explain and defend his conversion. It is based on Horace's fable, but it goes, he declares, far beyond anything Horace did:

Now whereas Horace keeps to the dry naked story, I
have more copiousness than to do that, I'gad. Here, I
draw you general Characters, and describe all the
beasts of the Creation; there, I launch out into
long Digressions, and leave my Mice for. twenty
Pages together; then I fall into Raptures, and
make the finest Soliloquies, as would ravish you.
(1:39; 79-84)

With his enormous ego and his tricks of speech like "I'gad," this Bayes does indeed sound like the central character in The Rehearsal. He also loves to point out his own poetic conceits, such as the line "Was least deform'd because Reform'd the least," of which he declares: "There's De and Re as good I'gad as ever was" (320-21). His pride in silly wordplay is matched by his desire to explain the obvious (cf. 441-43), by his inability to catch the irony directed at him by his friends (as in 252), and by his egregious delight in the power and point of his religious allegory. Dryden could not help but be hurt by an attack that treated hisvery personal "confession of faith" (Fujimura 407) with such sarcasm and mockery.

The first four lines of Bayes's poem about the mice, which parody Dryden's famous opening lines, effectively establish the diminished level of discourse common in Restoration satire:

A milk-white Mouse immortal and unchang'd,
Fed on soft Cheese, and o 're the Dairy rang 'd;
Without, unspotted; innocent within,
She fear'd no danger, for she knew no Ginn.
(90-93)

When Johnson remarks that "soft Cheese is a little too coarse Diet for an immortal Mouse" (94-95), Bayes admits that he should have found more ethereal food to give his divine creature, but he "could not readily find it in the Original,"—that is, Homer—thus exposing his ignorance of Greek. At the same time, these lines implicate Dryden's tendency to treat his mice as both real and divine or allegorical, a fault Prior and Montagu particularly deplore. In their Preface to The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd, they ridicule Dryden's "new way of telling a story, and confounding the Moral and the Fable together" (Prior 1: 36), so that the story alternates between the two levels without coherence. Another example occurs when Bayes has his mice eat their way out of the back of a hackney coach, so they won't have to pay the fare. Smith comments that a Templar would not normally be able to do this, but Bayes replies that these are, after all, mice. Much of Prior and Montagu's satire, then, is directed at Dryden's failure to create a proper fable rather than at his moral or spiritual failures.

In their parody Prior and Montagu often follow Dryden's verse closely, italicizing those words they actually quote from his poem and altering others to bring out an absurdity or contradiction. Skillful compression or expansion enables them to reduce Dryden's complex narrative to ridiculous simplicity. A typical example occurs when the two parodists imitate Dryden's version of the creation and fall of man. In his fable Dryden tries to justify James's recent shift to a policy of toleration for Dissenters and Catholics, so he identifies mercy as a central ingredient in the human mind, along with reason. The Creator he portrays as a blacksmith:

The Smith divine, as with a careless beat,
Struck out the mute creation at a heat:
But, when arriv'd at last to humane race,
The god-head took a deep consid'ring space:
And, to distinguish man from all the rest,
Unlock'd the sacred treasures of his breast:
And mercy mix'd with reason did impart;
One to his head, the other to his heart:
Reason to rule, but mercy to forgive:
The first is law, the last prerogative.
(3:130; 253-62)¹¹

At the same time, Dryden depicts God as a baker, who molds humanity from clay, adding some milk to soften the mixture so that humans will find satisfaction in being "kind as kings upon their coronation day" (271):

Thus kneaded up with milk, the new made man
His kingdom o'er his kindred world began:
Till knowledge misapply'd, misunderstood,
And pride of Empire sour'd his balmy bloud.
(274-77)

Picking up these images, Prior and Montagu collapse them into one incoherent one:

But he work'd hard to Hammer out our Souls,
He blew the Bellows, and stir'd up the Coals;
Long time he thought and could not on a sudden
Knead up with unskim'd Milk this Reas'ning Pudding:
Tender, and mild within its Bag it lay
Confessing still the softness of its Clay,
And kind as Milk-Maids on their Wedding-Day.
(281-87)

The mixed metaphor of the passage, the change in human makeup from clay to pudding, and the absurd picture of the original fetus all contribute to the wonderful farce of the parody. Prior and Montagu continue their mockery by extrapolating these images into human history to identify where we eventually went wrong:

Till Pride of Empire, Lust, and hot Desire
Did over-boile him, like too great a Fire,
And, understanding grown, misunderstood,
Burn'd Him to th'Pot, and sour'd his curdled Blood.
(288-91)

Dryden's serious argument is thereby reduced to a ridiculous culinary blunder, by extending the original metaphors to their nonsensical, if literal, consequences. While James's policy of toleration is called into question, the central thrust of the attack is Dryden's lack of command over his medium, his failure as a poet.

Furthermore, Prior and Montagu ridicule Bayes's pride in the "Majestick turn of Heroick Poesy" (405), which he claims to have given his poem, echoing Dryden's own words in his preface (3:122).They mock Bayes's use of language when he tries to distinguish between "doomed" and "fated." Bayes claims, anticipating Humpty-Dumpty, that he can use words as he wants since he is their boss: "sure I that made the Word, know best what I meant by it" (112-13). Prior and Montagu further suggest that Dryden sets himself up as literary dictator or poetic Pope, allowing no one to question his judgment (526-36). They burlesque Dryden's simile of tradition as a staircase, which, they suggest, sends their wits soaring as they climb up the stairs to the coffee house (571-80). Bayes's taste for the morality found in "the delectable History of Reynard the Fox" is parodied along with his difficulty in understanding Milton's poetry, so "that a Man must sweat to read Him" (391-92). The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd, then, is serious literary satire, carried out with precision and wit, and its notable achievement did not go unrecognized.

Two other poems culminate Prior's early satiric phase. The first, "A Session of the Poets" (most of it probably written in 1688), takes up a popular poetic genre, the "sessions" poem, to comment on the literary scene. Following an earlier poem by Rochester, Prior imagines Apollo reviewing various candidates for the office of Poet Laureate, which James II must fill because, the poet declares, he has replaced so many of his other ministers. Each candidate appears before the god to argue his case, with Dryden leading the way by defending his record for having written well and often in support of the king. Apollo dismisses his claim:

They that set you at work let 'em e'en pay you for't.
Whats Religion to Us, tis well known that many
Have manag'd the Place well without having Any.
(1:63; 15-17)

Other claimants offer their credentials, from Sir Francis Fane and his plays, to Edmund Waller, Aphra Behn, Thomas Shadwell, and the other writers Prior had already attacked. Most of them, like Elkanah Settle, are simply insulted or sneered at by Apollo:

With a bundle of Poetry Settle was there
Some brought from the Play-House, and some from the Fair.
But Apollo assur'd him, He never wou'd Chuse
The Lawrel from such Demi Poets as those
Who write Treason in Verse, and recant but in Prose.
(78-82)

As writers, some might be acceptable, like Waller or Sedley, but they are dismissed for other reasons—Waller for not having been punished because of his writing (like Dryden in the Rose Alley ambush) and Sedley for having an independent fortune. Rarely does Prior's poem rise above this kind of abuse or superior dismissal.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the poem is the introduction, where James II is compared to an aggressive player in a fashionable card game:

Since the King like a venterous Gamster at Loo
Threw by his old Courtiers, and took in for New
Till by shuffling and drawing the cards were so mix't
That those which Won this deal were laid aside next
The Sons of the Muses began to repine
That who e'er was turn'd out John Dryden kept in
So, Numerous and Noisy to Phoebus they came
To ask why of All the Knaves he shou'd be Pam.
(1-8)

Politics continues to disturb the literary scene; but other than these lines, imaginative railing is scarcely employed and the poem breaks off as one more group of writers comes on stage to be reviewed by Apollo. Prior never finished the poem and never published it, with good reason; but it demonstrates his serious concern about literature at this time of social and political turmoil and his condemnation of both individual writers and partisan conflict. Perhaps his failure in this poem arises from his inability to find an object of pathos or praise in the situation that would enable him to transcend a genre not especially suited to him.

Another poem, "Epistle, to Lord—" (probably written in 1687 to Lord Dorset in response to Dorset's praise of The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd), reveals a striking shift in Prior's approach to satire: it deals with types rather than individuals and incorporates self-irony into the satiric texture. Prior opens with traditional praise of Dorset's comprehensive genius and goodness. Not only is Dorset generous, noble, and the leading poet of his day "since great Strephons death" (7), but he is also a genuinely good man with "A real Judgment, and a Solid Mind / Expert to use these blessings in their kind, / As Prudence dictates, and as God design'd" (1:57; 13-15). Dorset has been given great gifts and knows how to use them, Prior declares, thus establishing his central theme that one's life should focus on fulfilling special powers or aptitudes.

The rest of the poem is taken up with the failure of this ideal. Prior takes his theme from Horace's Epistles 1:14 that all people have at least one good quality or talent in their lives (the faculty of reason, artistic powers, martial prowess), but few know how to use it wisely or effectively, generally hoping to shine in other ways or inappropriate fields. As Prior puts it, "Not that Men want, but use their parts amiss" (47). He surveys a broad spectrum of types who exemplify this failing, from the sailor who tries to become a "Spark" to the peaceful youth who parades around the citywith a long sword analyzing military defeats as if he were an expert. One of the major examples of such a misguided desire is the poetic translator who chooses the most difficult work possible to show his skill, but with only ludicrous results:

No Ancient Piece, much harder than the rest,
That by Translation scorns to be exprest,
But all those People who to Phillis chime,
And make admiring and desiring Rhime,
With Emu'lous Labour turn and tumble it,
And heads forthwith are scratch'd, and nailes are bitt.
(52-57)

The awkward last line of this passage comically mocks the poor poet struggling to find ways of expressing the complex original, but only emerging with the banal and commonplace, if indeed with anything. Prior thus returns to the theme of mistranslation that occupied him previously in his "Satyr upon Translators"; but unlike the earlier poem, only two real names appear in this poem, Pulton and Higden, minor writers whose brief mention sets off the general satire of the rest. Moreover, the tone of the attack here is significantly different from previous satires, whose punitive force has turned into an amused acceptance at the foolishness of flawed human nature.¹²

The most unusual and interesting parts of the poem, very briefly introduced but nevertheless striking, are those where Prior turns the satire back on himself. The first instance occurs with reference to writers who pretend to be more than they really are:

Is there another, with such moderate Sence
It just suffices not to give offence?
Tis odds but he shal Print his Poetry,
Tho such perhaps as Higden writes or I.…
(85-88)

Though only a passing remark, such self-deprecation is not very convincing. The ending of the poem provides a more effective and authentic example of this new note:

I met [a] Youth, and truly, far from spight,
Told him his Tallent never was to fight—
He frown'd, and said, "Nor yours perhaps to Write!"
(134-36)

As the poem's conclusion this self-mockery offers a dramatic shift in Prior's normal satiric mode, away from the sharp and sometimes vitriolic abuse found in his other satires. Prior clearly owes this new note to Horace, but the contrast with his other satires shows how unusual the self-deprecating mode is for him.

Our "English Horace," then, emerges as much less Horatian in his early satires than we might expect, given his reputation. From the Restoration mode of invective, Prior moved to more complex and varied approaches that he eventually developed into such poems as "Paulo Purganti and His Wife," "Jinny the Just," and Alma. Early in his career, however, writing in the shadow of Rochester, Dryden, and Oldham, Prior's targets were specific, often eminent individuals whom he treats with contempt and derision. In light of Prior's own precarious station in life, his boldness in engaging and challenging some of the finest satirists of the time is impressive. As tone and mode vary from one work to the next, evolving (though not in a strict linear fashion) toward a mixed and balanced complexity, one theme remains constant: the deplorable state of literature in his time.

Prior was not completely happy with invective, perhaps because it was not suitable to his own poetic genius, and perhaps because the temper of the nation was changing as well. Whatever the cause, Prior moved toward a less aggressive satire, gradually incorporating more pathos, praise, or bemused tolerance. Nevertheless, even in his later poetry Prior often includes a sharp bite or cutting thrust that surely owes something to his earlier interest and skill in using the poetic lash.

Notes

¹ Goad, however, believes that Prior's Horatian qualities are less than Addison's; Prior, she believes, lacks Horace's "depth of feeling" and "breadth of vision" (97).

² The importance of Juvenal as a model for the Restoration satirist has been thoroughly documented by Howard Weinbrot in chapter 1 of Pope.

³ The statement that Prior's "characteristic mode of poetic address" is "panegyric" (Williams 438) seems quite off the mark, especially for his early poetry where punitive satire plays an important role.

⁴ All citations of Prior's poetry and prose are from the standard edition of his works by Wright and Spears. I am much indebted to their excellent annotations. The first reference to each work gives volume, page, and line numbers; subsequent references cite only lines.

⁵ These volumes include Ovid's Epistles (1680), Miscellany Poems (1684), and Sylvae (1685). Prior naturally singled Dryden out because the Poet Laureate wrote prefaces to two of these volumes (Ovid's Epistles and Sylvae) and included a number of his own English poems and translations. Raman Selden shows that Dryden's "liberal" theory of translation, which he outlined in the preface to Ovid's Epistles, was not universally accepted at the time and that a more literalist view had its proponents ("Juvenal" 481). Dryden himself freely admitted that he had significantly altered the original in his versions: "I have both added and omitted, and even sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my Authors, as no Dutch comnmentator will forgive me" (Works 3: 3-4). Dryden's editors have noted these frequent changes, including the occasional additions of lines that have no basis in the Latin (see, e.g. Works 1: 338-39). Thus, there is some factual basis for Prior's attack.

⁶ The few critics, however, who have commented on Prior's early satires do not find much to praise. Rachel Trickett declares that these poems do "not reflect much credit on him" and that he seemed to have a "vicious dislike of Dryden" (142). Eric Rothstein, more plausibly, finds in Prior's work "a good sample of volleys in the continuing paper war that marks the period …" (181). Frances Mayhew Rippy finds the "Satyr on the modern Translators" harsh and "somewhat uncivil" (70), while crediting the "Satyr on the Poets" with an attack on England that exposes some of the "social ills underlying individual faults" (71). William Kupersmith judges the "Satyr on Poets" to be "both a poor imitation of Juvenal's seventh satire and unattractive as an original poem" because Prior attempts "to write satire and panegyric simultaneously …" (138).

⁷ Monmouth led a small invasion force to England from Holland, landing at Lyme Regis on 11 June 1685. He was captured after his army was defeated at Sedgemoor on July 6 and executed on July 15. "Archibald Campbell, ninth Earl of Argyle, unsuccessfully attempted to rally Scotland to Monmouth's standard in May, and was taken prisoner on 18 June. He was executed on 1 July" (Prior 2: 818).

⁸ Brooks, Weinbrot (Formal Strain), and Kupersmith discuss the relevant background for the imitation, which became a distinct genre in the Restoration. Brooks suggests that "it was by Oldham that Thomas Wood, Henry Higden, and Matthew Prior were inspired in writing four imitations of Juvenal published between 1683 and 1694" (137-38), and notes that Prior in his "Satyr upon the Poets" quotes Oldham's imitation of Juvenal's seventh satire, thus following his lead. Kupersmith, more accurately I believe, comments that Prior's poem is a "very free adaptation with no real attempt at keeping a running parallel between the original and the Imitation …" and that it "reminds one of Rochester and Scroope rather than of Oldham and Wood, whose stricter and more sophisticated technique gives the reader the additional pleasure of seeing the interplay between the original and the Imitation" (133). Prior, I believe, creates his own voice and sets forth his own personal themes.

⁹ Not long before Prior, John Oldham had done a version of this satire using the ghost of Spenser to deplore the wretched conditionin which poets were forced to live by public neglect and indifference. Spenser was the classic exemplar of the neglected poet, and his ghost cites the similar cases of Cowley, Waller, and Butler that occurred in the Restoration. Spenser concludes his diatribe against the contemporary world by acknowledging that he will undoubtedly never convince Oldham to give up his devotion to poetry and that Oldham will no doubt end up in misery. It is a very bleak vision with even less hope than Juvenal found in Rome, where the new emperor (Hadrian) appeared to be ready to offer some support to the arts. Prior offers comparatively more hope, since he has a patron who supports letters wisely and generously. Still, the picture Prior paints of his society is largely negative.

¹⁰ Prior had previously published a few Latin and English poems, but they had not attracted any particular notice.

¹¹ All references to Dryden's Works are to the California edition. The first reference to each work gives volume, page, and line numbers; subsequent references cite only lines.

¹² Such milder satire was typical of the epistle, as Howard Weinbrot points out in The Formal Strain (93).

Works Cited

Brooks, Harold F. "The 'Imitation' in English Poetry, Especially in Formal Satire, before the Age of Pope." Review of English Studies 25 (1949): 124-40.

Dryden, John. The Works of John Dryden. Vol. 1: Poems 1649-1680. Ed. Edward Niles Hooker et al. Berkeley: U of California P, 1956. Vol. 3: Poems 1685-1692. Ed. Earl Miner et al. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.

Fujimura, Thomas H. "The Personal Drama of John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther." PMLA 87 (May 1972): 406-16.

Goad, Caroline. Horace in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 1918.

Horace. Horace: Satires, Epistles and 'Ars Poetica.' Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1961.

Juvenal. The Sixteen Satires. Trans. Peter Green. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.

Kupersmith, William. Roman Satirists in Seventeenth-Century England. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1985.

Lord, George deForest. Classical Presences in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.

Prior, Matthew. The Literary Works of Matthew Prior. Ed. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1971.

Rippy, Frances Mayhew. Matthew Prior. Boston: Twayne, 1986.

Rothstein, Eric. Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 1660-1780. Routledge History of English Poetry 3. Boston: Routledge, 1981.

Selden, Raman. English Verse Satire 1590-1765. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985.

——. "Juvenal and Restoration Modes of Translation." Modern Language Review 68 (1973): 481-93.

Sherburn, George. "Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature." A Literary History of England. Ed. Albert C. Baugh. New York: Appleton, 1948. 699-1108.

Trickett, Rachel. The Honest Muse: A Study in Augustan Verse. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1967.

Weinbrot, Howard D. Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.

——. The Formal Strain: Studies in Augustan Imitation and Satire. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969.

Williams, Arthur S. "Making 'Intrest and freedom agree': Matthew Prior and the Ethics of Funeral Elegy." SEL 29 (1989): 431-45.

Winn, James Anderson. John Dryden and His World. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.